


Leaving Earth

by Hunter (AlessNox)



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 09:25:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5329055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlessNox/pseuds/Hunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little Georgy Learner goes to space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Little Georgiana Lerner dug her hands deep into the rich black soil. The setting sun cast shadows through her auburn hair as she crawled underneath the oak tree turning to look up at the sunlight shining through the dark green leaves.

Georgiana loved being in her garden. She had planted pumpkins last year, and this spring she had grown lettuce, radishes, and marigolds. The lettuce and the radishes were gone, eaten in salads with dinner, but the marigold leaves tickled her feet as she rolled among them, leaves sticking in her hair. It was warm now, but after sunset the night would turn chill so she had come early instead of sneaking out after dark as she had originally planned. She sat up and dug in the earth with her hands uncovering a pink earthworm.

She threaded her fingers through the dirt, lifting the soil to her nose and then dropping it to fall in clumps back down to the ground. Georgiana loved the smell of the earth. She wondered what would happen to the garden when she left. Would someone else take care of it, or would it grow wild sprouting up the odd radish or pumpkin every other year? No matter what happened, she would never come here again. 

They would be leaving in the morning. Daddy was already setting up house. She had said goodbye to Daisybell and Katz the goats, and the big old dog Brownie. She would miss Brownie the most even though he wasn't her dog. She knew that he would be sure to see her off when she left tomorrow morning.

She lay down and tried to hug the ground but all that she succeeded in doing was tickle her ear on a blade of grass, staring at the earthworm who shimmied forward trying to dig his way back into the dirt. She lay there for a long time, watching the leaves moving in the wind. She lay still as an ant crawled across the back of her hand. Then she turned over and stared at a magnificent landscape of clouds turning pink and orange in the pale blue sky. "Orange like my marigolds," she thought.

The moon had risen. It shone a pale white bathed in blue. "I wonder," she said, "if I had a big enough telescope, could I see daddy there?" She was considering climbing the tree, when a beep on her belt alerted her that her mother was calling. She pushed the blue crystal switch and heard her mother say, "Georgy, dinner is ready."

"Be right there Mama," she said standing up and dusting the leaves and grass off of her clothes with her dirt-covered hands. It only succeeded in getting them dirtier.

She looked up. "Maybe right now, Daddy is looking down at me in my garden. Then he'd be watching me, just as I'm watching him? It's almost like we're together, and in just a little while," she said, "I'll be on the moon too."

 


	2. Moon Girl

Moon Girl

When we left home, there were people all around. Mama put a hand on my shoulder and led me through the crowd. There were people with headsets and cameras watching us. They yelled as we passed calling out, "Moon girl!"

Everywhere we went it was, “Moon Girl! Moon Girl!”

Mama stopped and talked to a report who then bent down and said, “We are here with Georgiana Lerner, the Moon girl. Can you tell the audience how it feels to be the first child to go into space.”

“No, I don't think so.”

He laughed, “I think that she's a bit shy?”

“I've ever been in space. You should ask me after I've been there.”

“Well, once you're there, then you won't be around for me to interview. Unless you promise to give me another interview when you get back.”

Georgy frowned, “I don't think that I'm going to be coming back. You'll have to come up to the moon if you want to talk to me again.”

The man looked at the camera and said, “That would certainly be an experience to look forward to.”

 

When we landed, there were also crowds, but these people called me _Cosmonavta,_ or space girl. It might have made sense if I was coming back from space, but I had only had training classes. Walking on the bottom of a swimming pool in a space suit and catching rings that they dropped from the surface. It was great fun, but it wasn't space. It took work to move around in that heavy suit, and once I had bounced up, it was sometimes hard to come back down on my feet again even wearing weights. I would fall forward and land on my chest.

The first time I fell, Mama rushed forward afraid that the suit would break open and I would drown. But when she heard me laughing, the sound echoing in my helmet, she calmed down. The seals held. Jumping is the best way to get around in the water. It is much better than walking. Uncle James said I was smart to figure that out so soon. He said there were plenty of adults who tried over and over to walk like they did on Earth rather than leaping. Uncle James would know. He had been to the moon lots of times. That's why he was our trainer.

We took another flight and I woke up in time to see the sun rise over the water. Bright red-orange light spread across the waves in an arc. It shone through water that was as green as glass. Mama thought that it was very pretty. It made her cry. I think that mama might miss the Earth even more than me.

The water in Istanbul was as dark as my hair ribbon. I took my ribbon out of my hair and tied it around Tina my dolly. Mama was watching the news, and frowning. We were on the screen. They were saying that I shouldn't go. That it was unsafe and mama was bad for taking me. I asked about it, but mama told me not to worry and then she put in earphones and turned my screen on to a cartoon.

Mama told me to sleep, but I was too excited. There was water and land and it was sunny and bright outside. I was tired when we landed though, and I fell asleep as soon as we reached our hotel room.

I woke up in a big bed with Tina lying beside me. Mama had ordered breakfast. There were bananas and berries and oatmeal. The sun wasn't up yet, so I took a bath. Then we left for the train station once it was light.

There were no crowds when they boarded the train for Kazakhstan. We walked on and went to our private car without anyone watching or calling out _Cosmonavta_. I asked where the people were, and Mama said that they were probably waiting at the airport. That is why we had decided to go by train.

"Why are they so interested in us, Mama?"

"Because you'll be the first little girl to go into space," Mama said.

"Why didn't we go up in New Mexico like Timmy and his dad?"

"This rocket is safer. And it won't shake so much on the way up.”

"But I like shaking!"

Mama smiled, and patted my hand.

We were the only ones in our car, but other people passed through from time to time to go to other cars. One boy tugged his mother's shirt and pointed at me. He called me _"Kosmicheskaya devochka",_ the girl cosmonaut before his mother pulled him away for being rude.

“Mama, why are people always talking about me?”

“Well, when you are the first at something, there are lots of people who find that interesting.”

“Why?”

“Because if you can do it, they think that they might be able to do it too.”

“Why couldn't they do it? Why didn't any children go up before?”

“I guess, no one thought to take them before. And there are a lot of things that just weren't made yet like child-sized space suits and or pink launch couches.”

“Oh Mama, It doesn't matter what color it is.”

“I know, Georgy.”

"Can I read my book now?"

"Of course," she said rising to get the case from overhead.

Mama had only let me take one storybook. I had more stories on my computer to read, but it was nice to have a book with pages. The one that I brought had a hard cover with gold and silver spirals on the front. The pictures were painted in pinks and greens with dragons and flowers, and little girls and a little blue bird hidden on every page. In the story about the girl and the goblin, the bird was in a golden cage hidden in a dark cave. That was the saddest picture I think, for the bird at least. I asked daddy if space was dark like that cave. He said that it had never seemed that way to him. Daddy said that space is bright. It is full of stars and sunlight, and the moon. He said that when people looked up some see the lights in the sky while others only see the dark.

I also had a set of wooden pencils, and I used them to draw pictures. I still have most of them. Pictures of cars and camels and trains. Pictures of horses and dogs and mountains and airplanes and of the blue sky. Those are the strangest ones. The ones with the blue sky. I can hardly remember seeing the sky like that. I remember the stars from Earth, and even the cloudy days where it seemed like you were under a roof of white cotton, but the blue sky. That's like a dream to me now. Now when I look up at the sky, it is always black.


	3. Sightseeing

In Baikonur, there were carts and shops everywhere selling souvenirs, such as camels and groundhogs with the name of the town written on the front. Georgy thought that they looked silly, but mom seemed to like them. She took out her phone and took a picture to send to Daddy.

She told Georgy that they first had to see all of the space sights. This was mama's first time at Baikonur. The first of the great world launch sites. They left the hotel with a woman named Josey who took them around town.

They got out of the car and walked around the park. It was full of flowers. The ground in some places was a bit bare. It reminded of her of their old home in Arizona. It was the same kind of short trees and bushes, except the bushes were different and there were no cactus. Also, it war very cold here. Georgy was wearing her winter coat despite the fact that it was sunny. The slight breeze chilled her cheeks, but she forgot that when she saw the statue.

It was really tall and red. On top there was a statue of a woman. The shadow cut across the sidewalk touching a streetlight. Georgy walked over to try to stand in the statue lady's shadow, but mama called and told her to get off of the grass.

She wanted to say that there wasn't any grass there, only dirt, but she didn't. Instead she walked out onto the sidewalk.

"This statue is called Science and Space," mama said, "I've seen postcards, but it's so much more impressive to see for real."

"Does the lady have a name?" Georgy asked.

Mama looked down at the tour book in her hand, "It's called Stella I think, but my Russian is not that great," she said, "that makes sense. Stella means star."

"I know that mama, I'm not stupid," Georgy said.

"Of course you're not," Mama said, "But you could be a little more polite."

"Sorry mama," she said as she stared down at the tiles. They were hexagonal. She crept forward touching first one toe then another to the corner, then she made a game where she tried to jump over exactly three hexagons and land on the fourth one. She wasn't quite making it.

"Look over here, Georgy. Let me take your picture."

Georgy looked up. Standing on one foot and trying to stay in the hexagon.

"Put your foot down, Georgy," Mama said, and she did, touching the ball of one foot down carefully to keep her from falling. The moment that she said Okay though, she lifted her foot and began to hop toward the statue again. The hexagons before the statue were stained red as if the rain had washed the color from the statue over them. She reached out and touched the surface. It was cold. She counted the stripes on the front. She looked up. It looked like the woman was holding a ball and snake over her head.

"Why does she have a snake?" Georgy asked.

"That's not a snake," Hiromi said shaking her head, "Come back here. You can see it better from further away."

Georgy hopped across the tiles and stood beside her mother who placed a hand on her shoulder. "You see that is the Earth, and that thing spiraling around it and past her head is the trail of a rocket. She has made it possible for the rocket to leave the Earth. Science and technology has made it possible for us to reach beyond the Earth and venture into space. Do you understand?"

"It still looks like a snake to me," Georgy said, "Can I run down the sidewalk?"

Mama gave a sigh. "Alright," she said giving her shoulder a pat before pulling out her phone to take some more pictures.

Next they walked beside a white wall. She reached out and touched the pattern. It showed planets and space ships and it reminded her of the wall paper of her room back home. On the other side of the wall was another statue.

"This one is glory to the conquerors of space," Mama said.

"Are we conquering space, mama?" Georgy asked.

"Absolutely!" she said, "We are conquerors because we are going to stay."

"Oh!" Georgy said, "So do we get to wear those pointed helmets."

"What pointed helmets?"

"Like Cortés wore."

"You're thinking of conquistadors," she replied smiling, "Now look this way. I'm sending Daddy another picture."

Georgy liked this statue. It was weird with a big blue ball in a cage and things pointing this way and that with a rocket on top and a thing that looked like a Soyuz but also like a duck with one wing. She wanted to get under it and climb, but mama wouldn't let her.

The shadows this statue made were particularly fun to play on. She would jump from one to the other. "Look mama, I'm on the Soyuz", she said before jumping across to another shadow.

"In a couple days you will be," she said snapping another picture.

The town wasn't really that big, but it had camels! Georgy saw one on the side of the road when they went to a street market. It was brown and fuzzy with two humps peeking through a blanket that was bright blue and embroidered with red flowers. She asked her mama and then reached out and touched it. It made a honking-mewing sound and she drew back, but the man standing beside it put a hand on its neck and nodded to her. When she pet it, it bent down and licked her fingers. The man was wearing a bright blue velvet costume with a hat strung with white lace. His robe reminded her a bit of Santa Claus or more likely Father Christmas. He smiled at her and she smiled back before running ahead toward the brightly colored stores.

They walked past the stalls. Some were decked out with fiber lights that glowed different colors and spelled out the names of the things that were for sale. Georgy thought they were pretty, but she still couldn't read the Cyrillic characters.

There were other tourists at the market as well taking pictures of themselves and the carts. She passed one woman who pointed and took a picture calling out "space girl" as they walked by. Mother walked her down to the next row to get out of their way.

Mama stopped to admire some eggs that were shining all red and gold in the sunlight. They were covered with jewels. She picked one up and opened it to find that the inside was a beautifully decorated as the outside.

Georgy bent down to look at some toys. There were rattles and little dolls made of clay. Some horse shoes. One cart was completely covered with post cards. It also had nested dolls. Some were women wearing scarves. Some were groundhogs. One showed a cosmonaut with another inside of it. She tugged on her mother's arm and pointed.

"Look Mama," she said, "do you think that I'll be the one in the middle?"

Hiromi came over to look. She opened the layers one by one and found a rocket in the middle. She looked down at Georgy, "Sorry, no girl inside, only a rocket." Georgy shrugged and walked on past plates, and bells, and mugs, and paper books.

The market that they were in held many brightly colored things, but it just made Georgy sad. Before they left the car, her mother had said that they couldn't buy anything because of the weight limitations. Georgy sulked. "What's the point of going to a market if you can't buy anything?" she whined as she watched her mother fingering a red scarf with sequins.

Mama looked down at her and relented. "Alright Georgy," she said, "You can get one thing, but only one! Choose wisely because it it's too big or heavy, we may need to leave behind your pencils or something else of yours to compensate."

Georgy thought that Mama was probably not telling the truth about the pencils. They didn't weigh much, and she had heard Sergei say that weight was not that much of a concern on this trip, but she understood Mama's point. She was allowed to buy only one thing. The last personal thing that she would ever buy on Earth. She rushed forward looking through all the stalls to find it.

There was an angel made of crystal beads that sparkled in the sunlight, but it was mostly artificial light on the moon. The only sunlight was filtered through the windows. It probably wouldn't look the same. There were thin beautiful wind chimes that tinkled in the smallest breeze, but the moon had no wind. 'Things on the moon won't be the same as on the Earth', she thought. _'there won't be birds, or bees, or oceans, or trees_ '...that's when she saw it. In the back of a little stall, past the souvenir T-shirts. There was a row of little decorated boxes. Some were metal with bright jewels on the surface. One was glass, etched with swirls of white cloud in gold. But one box was made entirely of wood.

She walked forward and touched it. It was brown inlaid with lighter colored woods and painted with silver and gold like her storybook. There were lines carved into the surface. She traced one with her finger and it flowed around the lid of the box merging into other carved lines so that it never ended. A blue jewel sat right in the center of the lid, the color of the morning sky. She opened the box to find that it was lined with orange silk. She reached out to touch it, and found that you could lift it up to hide things underneath. The bottom was dark lined wood. How pretty it would look holding her leaves and stones. Her pencils might even fit inside so that Mama wouldn't have to throw them away. She turned and held it out to her. "This. I want this," she said.

Mama frowned for a second, looking the box over as if it might have knives sticking out of the edges. She opened the box and closed it again before handing it back to Georgy. "Are you sure? Do you want to look some more and come back?"

Georgy shook her head and mama took the box back going to the woman at the head of the stall and paying with a twist of her wrist. That evening, when her mother was asleep in bed, Georgy pulled the shoe box out. She sat on the floor of the bathroom and carefully dumped all of her dirt into the bottom of the box. It smelled wonderful. Then she put the orange false bottom in and placed her acorn, rocks, and leaves onto it. The orange silk shining like trees in the fall, its shiny threads smooth under her fingertips. Then she tossed the shoe box into the trashcan. Mama probably wouldn't have let her take that anyway. Georgy put the box into her bag and then crawled into bed pulling Tina close and smiling as she went back to sleep. She dreamed of the light shining through the leaves of the trees, but this time, the leaves were all orange.

The next morning was fun. After breakfast they met the base photographer and Georgy got to plant a tree. They had a small shovel just her size. She stood on it and dug a hole. She tossed the dirt behind her not careful to make it only one pile. Mama dug one too, but she had a very neat pile of dirt beside her hole. She enjoyed the digging, but then they told her it was time for planting. A man came over and deepened her hole which was apparently a bit the wrong size. Then she got on her knees and they shoveled the dirt in for her as she patted it down with her hands. Then she poured the silver bucket full of water onto the tree. She asked for more water because she knew from gardening that one bucket was not enough to start something as big as a tree, but they did not give her more. Apparently someone else was coming by later with a hose. Georgy wished that she could have used the hose. She was sure that if she sprayed the water just right, she could have made rainbows. She told mama, but she only smiled. After it was over, her mother made her change clothes.

Next, they finally got to sign the door. Mama gave her a permanent marker and she signed down near the bottom. There was lots of space there. Other people liked to sign higher. Mama also signed, bending down so that her name was near Georgy's.

They ate lunch and then got ready for the press conference. Mama spent a long time on her hair. They waited in a small room where Mama bent down and pulled at her jumpsuit.

"Now stand up straight and smile," she said. "Say Hello when they introduce you and when it's all over you remember what to say?"

"I say, 'Thank you all so much'."

"That's right, good. Now don't worry, you can color if you want. Alright, deep breath. Let's go."

 


	4. Press Conference

Uncle Sergei opened the door and winked at Georgy as she passed. Georgy liked Uncle Sergei. He was really Tim's uncle not hers, and he had a strong accent that sometimes made him hard to understand, but she liked him. He was funny.

 

The room that they entered had one wall made entirely of windows. There were people on the other side. Mama had explained to her that this was to keep them from getting sick, because someone might have a cold, and it would be a shame if they took the cold up into space and got sick there. The room made her feel like she was in an aquarium.

 

Mama sat down first, and then Sergei sat on the other side. She had a chair next to Mama. There were colored pencils and paper there, so she climbed into the seat and began to draw.

 

The people on the other side had been milling around talking, but when they had entered they'd turned toward them holding up microphones and pads. Lights flashed off of the glass until a woman raised her arms and said over the speaker, "Please, no flash photography. Thank You. Now if you will all take your seats, the press conference will begin.”

 

Georgy looked at Mama who was smiling. She smiled too. Several people took pictures of them, but Georgy soon got bored of it and went back to drawing.

 

“Ladies and Gentlemen. I will now introduce the members of this flight. The pilot and commander is veteran cosmonaut and lunar shuttle pilot Sergei Titov. This will be his thirty seventh launch aboard a Soyuz and his tenth flight as commander.”

 

"Zdravstvujtye," Sergei said nodding.

"His Copilot is mission specialist and future lunar colonist Hiromi Learner. Mrs Learner is a nutritionist and medic. She and her daughter will be going on to the ISF Lunar facility at the La Plaz Promontory."

"Hello everyone. Thank you so much for coming."

"And last but certainly not least in our thoughts is Georgiana Learner, daughter of Hiromi and Dr. Robert Learner, the first child to travel into Space."

“Hi!” Georgy said looking up and waving, “Nice to meet you.”

Her speech was followed by Aws and Oohs from the crowd including one rather loud exclamation of “How Cute!”

Georgy looked over at her mother whose eyes showed approval. She nodded back and then took out a green pencil to draw a picture of the park where she had seen the statue earlier that week.

The reporters began to ask questions and Mama and Sergei answered them. Most of the questions that they asked Mama were about her. Georgy never understood why everyone in the world seemed to be interested in her going into space. Lots of children went on trips with their parents. Her friend Mary had gone to the Philippines with her dad, and her cousin Mark had gone with his parents on a biking trip through Scandinavia. No one thought that that was strange. What was so strange about her going to live with her Daddy on the moon?

Georgy started drawing the base of the statue with a gray pencil. She mostly ignored what everyone was saying, but she looked up when she heard them laugh. 

"Did you always plan to take your children with you to the moon," a woman asked?

"No, actually our plan was to go to the moon and have children there."

"Alone on the moon, weren't you afraid?"

"Afraid of what?" Mama asked.

"Complications with the birth or pregnancy. Running out of diapers."

The crowd laughed again. Georgy smiled.

"I guess we supposed that we would get by," Mama said, "And let me take this moment to say that what we are doing, taking our daughter into space, is no different than what colonists have always done."

_'Exactly_ ', Georgy thought, _'just like I said_ '.

"When the first immigrants went to colonize the Americas it was, by no stretch of the imagination, safe. But people took their families with them. The family is the basic unit of society. You cannot start a new culture, a new society with only single men and women. We need families to make settlements and that means children."

The reporter was frowning. She didn't look very happy. She was probably one of those people who thought that space was too dangerous for kids. She hoped that they didn't try to stop her from seeing Daddy like the people back home had done.

The frowning woman continued, "But aren't you afraid that Georgiana might die in the harsh conditions of space?" 

"She could die here.” Mama said, “Of diseases spread by overcrowding. Of natural disaster. Of crime. Honestly I think that she will be much safer there than here. This is not a decision that we took lightly or without thought. We evaluated everything. We created custom space suits, redesigned spaces in the vehicle. A massive amount of design work has gone into making sure that Georgy will have the safest trip possible. Honestly the trip to the moon will actually be less dangerous than driving her to school for a year."

The announcer's eyes shifted nervously as she motioned to another reporter who asked Uncle Sergei a question, "And Commander Titov what are your thoughts about the flight?"

"I'm looking forward to it," he said smiling over at her. “Little Georgiana is like a little niece to me. It's wonderful to think that I can show her where I work."

The announcer tilted her head toward the door and Mama rose to her feet. Georgy stood and picked up her drawing and pencils. She took her mother's hand, and they stood in front of the glass for a moment to let the photographers take pictures before filing back out of the door.

Once the door was closed, Mama's smile fell off of her face. “I was worried for a minute,” she said to Sergei. “The last thing we need is for someone to mention that misguided child endangerment case again. As if taking a child to live with her family is some kind of crime. At least they can't reach us here.”

“I think it went well.” Sergei said smiling. Mama nodded at him, but she still looked worried.

Last night she had been worried too, frowning at the boxes they had packed, some to come with them and some to leave behind. Georgy had sat on the bed waving her legs back and forth and thinking of her garden back home and how the marigolds would be blooming now.

“Big day tomorrow, Georgy. You need to take a bath and then go to sleep. Do you want some apples? I still have some."

"No thank you, Mama."

She climbed to her feet and was about to go get her pajamas when her mother hugged her to her chest and kissed her hair. "It'll be okay, Georgy. Tomorrow we'll get on the ship and everything will be fine. There's nothing to worry about." 

“I know that Mama,” she said and pushed away from her. 

That night when Mama tucked her into bed, she smiled and reached out to touch her hands. "Don't worry mama," she said, "everything will be fine and soon we'll be with Daddy again."

Mama looked into her eyes and smiled, "You're right Georgy. Soon we'll be with Daddy. Sweet dreams." she said and kissed Georgy on the head before turning out the light.

Now Mama's brow was wrinkled again. Georgy took her hand and squeezed it saying, “Don't worry Mama. We'll be with Daddy soon.”

Hiromi looked down at her daughter surprised out of her thoughts. She smiled. “You're right, Georgy. We'll be with Daddy very soon.”

Georgy looked at her drawing. At home she would have hung it on the wall, but she didn't know where to put it now. She didn't even know if she would be able to keep it. She put the drawing down on a nearby table and placed the drawing pencils in her pocket. She didn't know when she'd have a chance to draw again.

The door opened and someone called in to say the bus was ready to take them to the launch site. Last night she had dreamed of rockets flying through the air spitting out starburst trails like fireworks, and bursting through clouds that glowed in the dawn light like golden sunflowers and marigolds. This morning she'd get to see it for real.


End file.
